Get an email when a new blog is published

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Recording at Edrom

The weather forecast for our day of recording had not been good and indeed as the day dawned it seems to have been raining heavily in other parts of the Borders not all that far away. This no doubt accounted for several members deciding against coming along.

Nevertheless over the day no fewer than fourteen members and friends did appear and by and large the weather held although there was some disruption for the odd shower and our picnic had to be taken indoors.

Notwithstanding the enforced weather disruptions good progress was made and perhaps 60%/70% of the stones were recorded. By popular request a further recording day will be arranged probably about the end of July but an exact date will be advised shortly.

Edrom is a very old graveyard, the original Church dating back to something like 1105, and a number of the stones proved very challenging but we did have our successes.

One very early stone had previously been recorded by Cargill and his transcription contained text which could only have been below soil level. Scraping away literally trying to unearth this we discovered the stone had been laid against and had preserved an even earlier one which read “here lyes Janet Younger 1697”. Not too much information but satisfying to discover – there are several stones going back to the late 17th century.

Another stone had initially been effectively written off as totally illegible indeed “no visible inscription”. Some persistence however unearthed text which was initially was quite baffling until it dawned that it was upside down. This had obviously been a slab stone which had lain horizontally but had at some point had been raised, probably to gain space, although unfortunately from our point of view the wrong way up. Considerable perseverance and contortion did finally result in the deciphering of a much of the text although try as could not a surname which being at the head of the stone is probably now underground. – we shall be continuing in our efforts.

Earlier while photographing some of the more modern stones I was befriended by a very conceited black and white cat who insisted on appearing in every shot. The above is only one of several in which he features.